Preventing Child Marriage in the Commonwealth: New report by the RCS and Plan UK

Posted by The Royal Commonwealth Society 24th June 2015

Child marriage has gained significant traction in the international community in recent years. It is now globally recognized as a harmful practice, a human rights violation, a development inhibitor, and a consequence and a cause of negative social norms. It is a priority area for action in the Commonwealth, with the Commonwealth Secretariat mandated to work towards ending the practice. Likewise, it has been the subject of resolutions in both the UN Human Rights Council and at the UN General Assembly. This progress is welcome, but significantly more must be done if we are to see real change on the ground.

The Royal Commonwealth Society and Plan UK have worked as partners towards ending child marriage in the Commonwealth since 2010. The launch of their latest report, Preventing Child Marriage in the Commonwealth: the Role of Education, took place at the 19th Commonwealth Conference of Education Ministers, and includes new statistics on child marriage prevalence in the Commonwealth, calculated from UNICEF data.

In the Commonwealth, around 375 million women alive today were married or entered into union before their eighteenth birthday – over 16 per cent of the Commonwealth’s population, and 52 per cent of women over 18 years old. At current prevalence, 43 per cent of women in the Commonwealth are married before they reach 18 years old. This amounts to over 44 million 20-24 year-olds who were married as children. Approximately 8.8 million women in the Commonwealth are married as children annually, that’s 24,000 girls every day, 17 girls every minute, almost one girl every three seconds.

Education has proven to have a strong correlation with lower rates of child marriage, and for this reason the Commonwealth must prioritise achieving inclusive, quality education for all girls and boys. Commonwealth Education Ministries can do much more to keep girls in school, and to provide quality education that enables girls to develop the relevant skills and knowledge they need to actively and independently participate in social and economic life. Education Ministries can do this more effectively by working in collaboration with other Government Ministries, with other service providers, with families and communities, and with girls themselves. The Commonwealth can support this agenda, drawing upon its potential for shared learning and experiences, utilising its common institutions, platforms, networks and “south-south” approach of sharing to increase effectiveness.

If we do not prioritise girls, we do a disservice to the world. Educated girls have the power to lift themselves, their families and their generation out of poverty. Educated women are less likely to die in childbirth, and their children are more likely to be healthy. Educated mothers are also more likely to send their girls to school, breaking the cycle of poverty.

Ending child marriage makes sense. But it is imperative because not acting is to be complicit in the violation of girls’ human rights. We must work together to ensure that girls can grow up with the freedom to make decisions about their own futures, the space to be girls, and the right to an education.

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4 comments

Posted on 25/07/2015 8:36pm
Iniobong Samuel

Recommendations in the prevention of child marriage is a free, compulsory and qualitative education of the girl child especially for the lessprivileged ones because the are the most vulnerable in this context when a girl child is educated she would not be lured into early marriage and other immoral vises.

Posted on 03/07/2015 7:32pm
Estella Achinko

This is great.

Posted on 02/07/2015 1:57am
Raymond Singamis

Very true indeed. I personally support this gender base equality. Looking very carefully to each common wealth countries, some of them are still developing and therefore in one way or the other still contributes in the high percentages of the child marriage systems. Countries like Papua New Guinea where I am from is one country who practices this as well. Many parts of Papua New Guinea is not develop. I come from one of the most least develop province in PNG. Western Province which is the richest province in PNG but yet so poor. From observations, the number of educated gender equality gives men more dominant over women. In my village alone, there is not even a single girl that has been educated. Most of them have been already in the child marriage system due to cultural norms. How can we fix this? I have been working on my community project to establish a clinic in the village and have done my survey, and its sad to say that, we are still leaving in the stone age. Does anyone cares, do we have a Government that cares for such remotest village for we are also part of the common wealth society but yet, we are so remote that, we encounter many difficulties. Difficulties in education systems, health systems, transportation systems, law and order issues, etc.. These are some of the most contributing factors of our gender equality percentage being dominated by men . I would like to appeal to common wealth to make it a priority to make sure these types of issues are addressed at the village level of the each of the common wealth countries. We must not focus too much at urban areas because they have access to information and what is happening in the world, but remote rural places like my village (Baktaman) doses not have these access, therefore when concentrating on this types of areas, it will have a high impact and will achieve the goals of common wealth society. I believe in giving a girl a chance to be educated. I will upload a video shortly on the blog on my survey done for gender base equality in my village.

Posted on 26/06/2015 10:22pm
MERCY WAWERU

i strongly agree on the education , protection and empowerment of the girl child. when you educate a girl you educate the society. LET US SPEAK FOR HER UNTIL SHE GETS A VOICE.